Definitions for TrueValueMetrics
Where? ... Where does TVM apply?

Where is very important. Things are different from place to place. What works in one place may not work in another. What are the constraints in one place may not constrain in another. Priorities depend on the place .. progress depends on the place and what is possible in the place.

TVM ... Where? TVM is everywhere

TVM is about a place ... any place ... anywhere ... everywhere! The good thing about a place is that it has perpetual existence. A place never moves ... there is a basis for longitudinal comparison that is reliable. This is an example:

Okehampton, a small town in England I grew up in Okehampton ... a small rural market town in the southwest of England. In 1935 it had a population of around 3,500. In the 1950s the population was something around 4,200. Back in the 11th century when the Doomsday Book was written up after the Norman conquest, Okehampton had a population of around 600 and was an important frontier town. Times changed ... but not the place.

This contrasts with the reporting of money profit for a business entity which has a focus on the entity (and its owners) with no focus on anything else except where the 'anything else' is going to have an impact on the money profit for owners.

Focus on community. TVM has a focus on community. TVM recognizes that there are big differences between places ... and even similar places have a myriad of subtle differences. Focus on the place ... gives clarity at the community level. At the national level, it is, perhaps, possible to understand something about the “state” of the national economy, but rather little about how and why the economy is in this state.

Management by walking around. It is possible to do management by walking around at the community level ... and there is no need to rely on sophisticated survey techniques and statistics that have been popularized in academia and research institutes and provide surprisingly unreliable management information. Community level data start to tell something or real importance ... and it becomes possible to see what are the factors that have resulted in the state of the community. If something in the data is surprising ... data at the community level helps to pin-point what caused this and why and how this came about.

It is more difficult to manage a multinational business organization ... there is little management by walking around. Worse, the impact on community is a distraction from the primary work of the organization which is to make money profit for the owners (and the executives).

Big communities. Some communities are too big and complex to be easy to understand. In this case the neighborhood may be a better level for detailed data. Common sense applies. In some cases it may be appropriate to get data at the block level. In high density urban settings, the block may still be quite a large population, and the economic activities quite complex.

Community is a place. Community is a place ... and all communities should “add up” to a larger place, that my be a district, or a state, or a country. In this perspective of community there is no spatial overlap. Within a community there may also be neighborhoods ... and within neighborhoods also blocks. In a fully developed TVM environment all of this 'rolls up' to provide aggregated reporting.

Community is also people. Community may also be based on a group interest ... an affinity group. This may overlap the community defined by geographic area. A note of caution ... the “roll-up” or aggregation of affinity groups is complex and should be done carefully and rarely used as a national or global aggregate.

When and where example: Malaria ... Vector Control The mosquito has a short life span ... but the malaria population grows fast when conditions are favorable. Killing mosquito larva is an effective way to limit the mosquito population, but larvacides are expensive. Killing adult mosquitoes can be done using ultra low volume (ULV) spraying ... but it is most cost effective when spraying is done only where and when it is needed. Data that shows the stage of larva development ... and the size and location of emerging mosquito populations collected today ... determines what should be done and where in the next 24 hours. The is a spatial element and a time element. Today's data determines what we do tomorrow! The cost of source control is minimized when larvaciding is done in the right place and at the right time and then this is achieved without reducing effectiveness.

TVM is ubiquitous ... pulling data from remote places where little is usually seen and reported.

TrueValueMetrics (TVM) is an Open Source / Open Knowledge initiative. It has been funded by family and friends plus donations from well wishers who understand the importance of accountability and getting the management metrics right. TVM is a 'big idea' that has the potential to be a game changer leveling the playing field so the wealth and power is shared on a more reasonable basis between people who work for a living and those that own the economy and the levers of power. In order to be effective, it cannot be funded in the conventional way with a for profit business plan, but absolutely must remain an open access initiative.